8
Jamie
The same femalevoice who had directed me out of the launch bay back on base came through my headset now. “Gamma 4, this is Arturri. What is your status? How many ships do you have on scanners?”
I glanced at Alex as we listened. Since he had automatically switched into fighting mode, this was serious.
“Velerion, this is Gamma 4. Status update, shielding is holding but is down to thirty-two percent. They’re jamming our scanners. We have visual confirmation of three Scythe attack ships. Repeat, visual only. Confirmed three Scythe fighters.”
“Gamma 4, this is Velerion. Confirmed, three Scythe fighters.”
A loud boom sounded through the comm, and I flinched as if the rock and debris had exploded inside my helmet.
“I thought you said we were out of attack range because of Velerion’s orbit!” I practically yelled at Alex.
“Gamma 4, this is Velerion. We are scrambling a starfighter. Estimated arrival fifteen minutes.”
“We are out of range,” Alex replied, which meant the enemy was doing something that hadn’t been anticipated. “They should not be attacking us now.”
“This is Gamma 4. We’ll be dead by then. Shields at five percent. We have children here.”
Kids? They had kids on whatever this Gamma 4 place was?
“What is Gamma 4?” I asked.
Alex pulled up a schematic of the structure on a screen before us, and I tried to make heads or tails of the multiple layers of three-dimensional images. I was not an architect, but it looked like a gigantic factory.
“Gamma 4 is a production facility for shuttle engines and shielding components for our entire fleet. It’s a small, hidden base that employs just over one hundred people. It’s never been attacked before. It’s too far away from Queen Raya’s fleet, and its exact location is top secret.”
“Apparently not any longer.” I moved the coordinates over into my system. “We’re only three minutes away.”
“There are three Scythe fighters, Jamie.”
I scoffed and plotted our route in the red glow. “Please. I took out a swarm of ten on the Moons of Menace mission. Ten. Three is nothing.” Throttling up, I had us moving at full speed within seconds. “And there are kids there. No one is killing kids. That’s not happening.”
Alex didn’t argue, just activated his weapons arrays as I did the same. He would control the heavy missiles and projectiles while I operated the line-of-sight laser cannons and sonar disruptors.
We didn’t need to bother with sensor jamming, as Gamma 4 had reported that the Dark Fleet Scythe ships had their jamming systems activated already.
Their jammers would completely hide our approach until it was too late.
Killing kids.
What were they thinking?
“Oh, they are going to fry.” No one had ever protected me when I was young. Hell, no one protected me now. I worked. I paid my bills. I took care of my damn self. That fact had made me more determined than ever to protect every child I came across who needed it. I’d been in a few screaming matches at parks with mothers not paying attention to their little ones. I’d even nearly gone to blows in an indoor playland when a group of older children were picking on a two-year-old baby boy and the parents did nothing. Nothing made me more enraged than someone picking on a child. Or a dog. Or kittens. Or…
Damn it. I just hated bullies.
I flew an arc around the nearest asteroid and came in behind the next asteroid where the Gamma 4 production facility was on my maps. As we neared, recognition clicked. “This is Gateway 4, from the game,” I told him. “Training, I mean.”
Alex shook his head. “Gamma 4. There is no Gateway 4 in the training simulation.”
“Yes, there is. I’ve seen this before.” I knew every nook and cranny, every outcropping of rock and the shapes of the marks on the asteroid’s surface. “I’ve seen this. In the training. But it was called Gateway 4. I had to fly in and pick up a kidnapped scientist before the bad guys took him through an interstellar transport gate.”
Alex shook his head. “No. It’s a production facility. Missile lock ready.”
Right. Back to business. But I knew this rock. And now that I’d seen exactly how much detail had been right as I’d played, I knew how I wanted to take on these Scythe fighters. “I’m going to swing up and over the base and come down on them from above. By the time they see us, it’ll be too late.”